Top area colleges for return on investment

When you factor in tuition as well as room and board, the average cost for in-state residents attending four-year public schools in the U.S. was $17,860 during the 2012-2013 school year, according to an analysis by The College Board. By contrast, the average annual cost at four-year private nonprofit schools was $39,518.

As a financial decision, one factor in determining the value of a college education may be how much future earning power a degree from an institution can produce. PayScale.com attempts to quantify and calculate this in their annual College Education ROI Rankings.

Payscale.com, an online compensation information company, developed its assessment for colleges with the best ROI by surveying full-time employees with a bachelor's degree and no higher. That information was paired with data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

PayScale.com determines a calculated cost of an institution's education, then projects the 30-year median pay of graduates adjusting for inflation. That information is then used to establish a 30-year return on investment in 2012 dollars. For state schools, it figures for both in-state and out-of-state students. See the complete methodology here.

So how did the Capital Region colleges and universities fare? Not all were part of the rankings. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY had the highest 30-year ROI at $1,254,000, which ranked it 21 of 1511 schools across the country. Union College in Schenectady ranked 112 and University at Albany ranked 344 for in-state students and 397 for out-of-state students. All the Capital Region schools in the ranking are shown in the chart below.

Of course, choosing a college is not simply a financial decision, and the value of an education cannot be completely measured in dollars and percentages. But it makes for interesting comparisons.